This is a rough draft of a work in progress, friends.
Harry Potter and the Dialectic of Representation: Magical Language and the Prose of the World
A. What happens when the kind of magic presented onscreen in the fantasy world meets the technological wizardry of the world of techno-commerce? Who "wins"? Well, if recent news concerning "stolen" footage from Harry Potter and The Deathly Hollows" provides any indication, the digital magic of ones and zeros (representation in its most abstract form) trumps J.K. Rowling's type of more quaint pagan magic every time.
According to CBS News Canada, in fact, "Hollywood studio Warner Bros. is fighting off a real-life nemesis as the penultimate film of the Harry Potter teen wizard series begins screening at theatres around the globe — namely an online file-sharing site that has posted a large chunk of leaked footage. A 36-minute excerpt of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 was "stolen and illegally posted on the internet" earlier this week, Warner Bros. said in a statement." By Warner Brothers' lights, "This constitutes a serious breach of copyright violation and theft of Warner Bros. property. We are working actively to restrict and/or remove copies that may be available. Also, we are vigorously investigating this matter and will prosecute those involved to the full extent of the law." Issues of fair use and piracy aside, perhaps one of the most refreshing things about the Potter books and films is its alleged rejection of "muggle" telecommunication technology, in favor of a kind of communication long sensed as lost to Western minds: a pre- representational, un-abstracted, or material form of language that supplements words with material things or dispenses with more abstract means of communication all together -- in a word -- magic.
Certainly, there is something about the film that lures us in. "Industry watchers have predicted a blockbuster opening weekend that could set new records for the hit franchise. The first six films have earned more than $5.4 billion US at the global box office, according to the box office revenue tracking website Box Office Mojo. The book series has sold more than 400 million copies and been translated into more than 65 languages. Dan Fellman, Warner Bros. U.S. distribution chief, forecast that the film's box office will surpass $100 million US during the opening weekend in Canada and the U.S. alone. "This one is heading north of $100 million," he told Reuters, adding that he believes it will also be the first Harry Potter film to make more than $1 billion US worldwide." http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2010/11/18/harry-potter-deathly-hallows-leak.html#ixzz15eYw5jo8 Sales is our current measure of cultural investment, and sales tell us that we are drawn to one or both kinds of wizardry in Potter: Techo-wizardry and/or its "nemesis" in Potter's anti- or pre-technological sort of magic.
In fact, to enjoy the good, old-fashioned magic presented onscreeen, one has to virtually ignore (or to ignore the virtuality of) the films presentation onscreen.
...
B. The “Authentic” and the “Abstract”:
In the case of reconfigurations of practices, “the Event of clearing … first grants saying and renouncing … and therefore language. Language and body (sound and script).” Here Heidegger explains the controversial thesis that a new coordination of practices cannot happen through an innovative mode of language alone. So far, contemporary language answers only to a rejection of abstract, global systems of representation and serves as immanent critique:
Against enlightenment and the cosmopolis, literatures of resistance to complex, emergent social structures (like the contemporary state system) tend to offer the appearance of a “return” to simpler, more enchanted views of reality. “Indigenismo,” of course, returns, as does an “appreciation” of the periphery (from the romanticized vision of an alienated metropolis) in sound and script (Rothenberg).
But also, against the monolithic, enlightened character of the Hebrew Book, Borges, for example, finds secret knowledges, magical letters, mirrors that do not simply represent reality but participate in it, magic – sometimes discovering complete, if alternate cosmologies: Tlon; Gnosticism; book-worlds; the materiality of language, of the Word. Even graphic novels – strange to say – can eschew representation by turning the abstraction of the word back into the body of the script. (in the form of a return to the heiroglyphic image?)
In defiance of the Greek Logos, on the other hand, fragmentation of the unified structure of reality takes place in the form of plural, incommensurate worlds – magical local realities that coexist with the mundane: myths; Wonderlands. Melville “breaks up the godhead, and we are the pieces.”
These last two phenomena suggest ways that postmodernism reanimates Romanticism. Deconstruction, which would seem allied with ancient exegesis and Socratic dialectic, actually pushes cosmopolitanism and enlightenment to its furthest extreme, providing an antiessentialist universal structure: of sign and play, forever-deferred meaning.
During times of suspicion toward enlightenment representation and toward a thoroughly disenchanted and globally administered world, a “return to the body” reemerges – worship of the flesh, the script, the voice or primal sounds; or an appeal to clans, tribes, or local priests and practices – and appears to loom as abstract representation’s other.
This longing for the myth, unalienated labor, unmediated language, the body, the ancestral home, the true calling itself is ancient, if only periodically reasserted in art: Stonehenge glorifies a hunting society even as it transforms into agriculture-based subsistence; Aeschylus marks the dawn of the polis, even while he strives to find a place for the vengeful furies of the clan system. Virgil founds empire on canonical myths of the conquered Greeks; Dante vertically arranges Heaven and Hell so that each resembles a specialized administrative hierarchy.
Several insights follow:
The now-canonical – if not sacred – texts of the Occidental tradition do the exact opposite of what Humanistic literary criticism has supposed. They do not posit “universal truths” at all, but rather a profound distrust for increasing universality.
In dialectic form, the longing for re-embodiment and enchantment sublimates the body into a technologized version of itself: cyborgs; hybrids; hypertexts; matrices; cinematically-circulated mythologies – commoditized and formulaic. The labyrinthine pursuit and detective story are sold as “whodunits” (“guilty pleasures”).
The authentic self, tribe or community – along with the language that would unify it – are desperately sought; and they routinely disappoint. The degraded language of the market is rejected, as is the modern lyric “voice,” while sophisticated avant-gardes return to primal sounds and disjunctive statements as a source of possible new community.
The distrust of universality is itself a function of universality. Dante does find a blissful worldview, having taken a detour from the misleading path of local, worldly truths.
The “power” of myth is reconfigured as magical, physical, technological (or sometimes economic) power. The hero, once “inspired” by breath, fire, spirit is now endowed with the power to manipulate substance, rather than to become attuned to a world in new ways, or to attune him or herself to new worlds.
The element of risk (rather than the inherent, nonquantifiable “reward”) within deep-level commitments to causes (beyond oneself), gets foregrounded. “Virtual” information- worlds appear to restore an intensity of embodied experience (in “thrills” and entertainment) while removing the element of risk entirely.
The “natural world” is re-enchanted in its ideal, abstract form, even while it is abstracted into a source for re-creation, and simultaneously partitioned off as property or destroyed in the interest of production.
The “values” that remain – flexible adaptation, fleeting attachment, and self-assertion, to wit, the values associated with youth – are marketed as the highest system of values.
Having abstracted reality to a global measure and forgotten the attraction of any possible committed local, communal (political) relation to clan, tribe, village, nature, art, language and labor, the individually-specialized super-state risks every day a complete social, material and emotional collapse, lives in fear and boredom. Why? Assuming, first, that the profoundest values are immeasurable and unachievable, and then assuming as consequence, without reflection, that language is merely information exchange, and that the only values are reducible to commodity, when commodities are no longer available, then almost literally, nothing remains of value in the human condition.
At any rate, there is a risk; and the risk is not limited to a mere sense of limitation on spiritual flourishing. But in the realm of spirit, community, innovation and a sense of familiarity with the mysterious, the two tacks of Western expression (roughly, Hebrew and Greek) have helped consolidate the problem of increasingly abstract representation even while they attempt to extract us from them. This is the paradox of the Humanities: even as literature, the arts and philosophy serve an impulse toward greater universality, these discourses claim at once also to reanimate the local, communal, political and linguistic life of a people.
by Prof. Keller
This is a rough draft of a work in progress, friends.
Harry Potter and the Dialectic of Representation: Magical Language and the Prose of the World
A. What happens when the kind of magic presented onscreen in the fantasy world meets the technological wizardry of the world of techno-commerce? Who "wins"? Well, if recent news concerning "stolen" footage from Harry Potter and The Deathly Hollows" provides any indication, the digital magic of ones and zeros (representation in its most abstract form) trumps J.K. Rowling's type of more quaint pagan magic every time.
According to CBS News Canada, in fact, "Hollywood studio Warner Bros. is fighting off a real-life nemesis as the penultimate film of the Harry Potter teen wizard series begins screening at theatres around the globe — namely an online file-sharing site that has posted a large chunk of leaked footage. A 36-minute excerpt of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 was "stolen and illegally posted on the internet" earlier this week, Warner Bros. said in a statement." By Warner Brothers' lights, "This constitutes a serious breach of copyright violation and theft of Warner Bros. property. We are working actively to restrict and/or remove copies that may be available. Also, we are vigorously investigating this matter and will prosecute those involved to the full extent of the law." Issues of fair use and piracy aside, perhaps one of the most refreshing things about the Potter books and films is its alleged rejection of "muggle" telecommunication technology, in favor of a kind of communication long sensed as lost to Western minds: a pre- representational, un-abstracted, or material form of language that supplements words with material things or dispenses with more abstract means of communication all together -- in a word -- magic.
Certainly, there is something about the film that lures us in. "Industry watchers have predicted a blockbuster opening weekend that could set new records for the hit franchise. The first six films have earned more than $5.4 billion US at the global box office, according to the box office revenue tracking website Box Office Mojo. The book series has sold more than 400 million copies and been translated into more than 65 languages. Dan Fellman, Warner Bros. U.S. distribution chief, forecast that the film's box office will surpass $100 million US during the opening weekend in Canada and the U.S. alone. "This one is heading north of $100 million," he told Reuters, adding that he believes it will also be the first Harry Potter film to make more than $1 billion US worldwide." http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2010/11/18/harry-potter-deathly-hallows-leak.html#ixzz15eYw5jo8 Sales is our current measure of cultural investment, and sales tell us that we are drawn to one or both kinds of wizardry in Potter: Techo-wizardry and/or its "nemesis" in Potter's anti- or pre-technological sort of magic.
In fact, to enjoy the good, old-fashioned magic presented onscreeen, one has to virtually ignore (or to ignore the virtuality of) the films presentation onscreen.
...
B. The “Authentic” and the “Abstract”:
In the case of reconfigurations of practices, “the Event of clearing … first grants saying and renouncing … and therefore language. Language and body (sound and script).” Here Heidegger explains the controversial thesis that a new coordination of practices cannot happen through an innovative mode of language alone. So far, contemporary language answers only to a rejection of abstract, global systems of representation and serves as immanent critique:
Against enlightenment and the cosmopolis, literatures of resistance to complex, emergent social structures (like the contemporary state system) tend to offer the appearance of a “return” to simpler, more enchanted views of reality. “Indigenismo,” of course, returns, as does an “appreciation” of the periphery (from the romanticized vision of an alienated metropolis) in sound and script (Rothenberg).
But also, against the monolithic, enlightened character of the Hebrew Book, Borges, for example, finds secret knowledges, magical letters, mirrors that do not simply represent reality but participate in it, magic – sometimes discovering complete, if alternate cosmologies: Tlon; Gnosticism; book-worlds; the materiality of language, of the Word. Even graphic novels – strange to say – can eschew representation by turning the abstraction of the word back into the body of the script. (in the form of a return to the heiroglyphic image?)
In defiance of the Greek Logos, on the other hand, fragmentation of the unified structure of reality takes place in the form of plural, incommensurate worlds – magical local realities that coexist with the mundane: myths; Wonderlands. Melville “breaks up the godhead, and we are the pieces.”
These last two phenomena suggest ways that postmodernism reanimates Romanticism. Deconstruction, which would seem allied with ancient exegesis and Socratic dialectic, actually pushes cosmopolitanism and enlightenment to its furthest extreme, providing an antiessentialist universal structure: of sign and play, forever-deferred meaning.
During times of suspicion toward enlightenment representation and toward a thoroughly disenchanted and globally administered world, a “return to the body” reemerges – worship of the flesh, the script, the voice or primal sounds; or an appeal to clans, tribes, or local priests and practices – and appears to loom as abstract representation’s other.
This longing for the myth, unalienated labor, unmediated language, the body, the ancestral home, the true calling itself is ancient, if only periodically reasserted in art: Stonehenge glorifies a hunting society even as it transforms into agriculture-based subsistence; Aeschylus marks the dawn of the polis, even while he strives to find a place for the vengeful furies of the clan system. Virgil founds empire on canonical myths of the conquered Greeks; Dante vertically arranges Heaven and Hell so that each resembles a specialized administrative hierarchy.
Several insights follow:
Having abstracted reality to a global measure and forgotten the attraction of any possible committed local, communal (political) relation to clan, tribe, village, nature, art, language and labor, the individually-specialized super-state risks every day a complete social, material and emotional collapse, lives in fear and boredom. Why? Assuming, first, that the profoundest values are immeasurable and unachievable, and then assuming as consequence, without reflection, that language is merely information exchange, and that the only values are reducible to commodity, when commodities are no longer available, then almost literally, nothing remains of value in the human condition.
At any rate, there is a risk; and the risk is not limited to a mere sense of limitation on spiritual flourishing. But in the realm of spirit, community, innovation and a sense of familiarity with the mysterious, the two tacks of Western expression (roughly, Hebrew and Greek) have helped consolidate the problem of increasingly abstract representation even while they attempt to extract us from them. This is the paradox of the Humanities: even as literature, the arts and philosophy serve an impulse toward greater universality, these discourses claim at once also to reanimate the local, communal, political and linguistic life of a people.